WASHINGTON — Sen. Josh Hawley is slowing things down in the U.S. Senate.
This summer, after the Biden administration’s harried withdrawal of Americans and their allies from Afghanistan, Hawley, R-Mo., announced he would obstruct the Senate’s process of confirming otherwise noncontroversial nominees to the State and Defense departments unless Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan resigned.
It’s a largely symbolic move. It doesn’t block Biden from filling Cabinet positions so much as it grinds the process down to a slog.
Democrats can get around Hawley’s blockade by putting nominees up for a roll call vote — it just takes up the Senate’s time as it hopes to pass Biden’s social safety net bill, fund the government, renew the National Defense Authorization Act and raise the debt ceiling before the end of the year.
But according to an analysis by The Kansas City Star, even when nominees do reach the floor, it’s extremely unlikely Hawley will vote for them.
Missouri’s junior senator has voted for only four out of the 118 nominees that have received a vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the fewest of any senator. He voted against all of the members of the Biden administration he subsequently called on to resign: Blinken, Austin, Sullivan and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Several of Biden’s nominees have drawn opposition from large swaths of Republicans. For example, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, has voted for just 19 of Biden’s selections.
But Hawley stands out, even compared to other Republicans like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. He has not voted to confirm a nominee on the floor since June 15.
“I just don’t think they’re good choices,” Hawley said. “I don’t think they’d be good for my state, I don’t think they’d be good for the country. There are a few notable exceptions.”
Those exceptions are Cecilia Elena Rouse, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the first woman of color to hold the job; Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative; Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general; and Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission.
Khan is known as a leader in the antitrust movement and aligns with some of Hawley’s views on using antitrust laws to break up “Big Tech” companies. She rose to prominence after writing a paper for the Yale Law Review called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” Hawley has written a book called “The Tyranny of Big Tech.”
Tai is a longtime trade expert who, as Chief Trade Counsel on the House Ways and Means Committee, helped negotiate the recent agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada during the Trump administration. She is the only nominee who’s confirmation has been unanimous.
Rouse taught economics at Princeton and was the former dean of their School of Public and International Affairs. She was also a member of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Monaco was chief of staff to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller until 2009, when she took on roles in the Obama administration. She worked for an international law firm prior to being nominated by Biden and advised clients like Apple.
Hawley said he does not believe there’s a “unifying thread” between the four exceptions.
“Me voting for them is not to say that I agree necessarily,” Hawley said. “These are not my choices. Just that I think they’ll do their job credibly and I think they won’t be terrible and they might have a chance at being pretty decent.”
It has become more common over the past 15 years for senators to block the nominees of an opposing party’s president, according to Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University.
The use of obstruction to help build a national profile stretches back even farther, with notable examples like the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a leader in the conservative movement who was nicknamed “Senator No.”
What has changed is the stated purpose of the blockade. While Helms often said no in order to achieve specific policy outcomes, Hawley is looking for an outcome that is extraordinarily unlikely.
“There have been senators who have basically made it their career to stop the Senate in its tracks,” Schiller said. “But typically, that was for something … they would get something tangible that they could claim credit for in the Washington policy community.”
It has gotten more difficult for individual senators to turn their priorities into legislation, something that has been lamented by U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri’s senior Senator. Often, legislation is put into one big bill at the end of the Congress, negotiated by just the House and Senate leaders, which leaves many rank and file out of the process.
Hawley’s blockade, however, is less about specific policy goals and more about punishing the Biden administration.
It also sends a clear message to his base.
“His audience is different,” Schiller said. “It’s the grassroots base of the party and that’s true for both sides of the aisle. And that becomes so dangerous for accomplishing anything. Literally you win if you lose.”
Hawley is one of many Republicans who are considered potential candidates for president in 2024, but he has competition in the Senate for attention from the conservative base. While he has voted against more of Biden’s nominees than any other senator, other prospective candidates like Cruz have also tried blocking Biden’s nominees.
Cruz was blocking nominees to the State Department before Hawley, because the Biden administration lifted some sanctions on Russia over an oil pipeline, which has led to frustration at the White House.
Now Hawley, too, has drawn their ire for a political move that’s unlikely to achieve his stated goal.
“Senator Hawley does a disservice to Missourians when he obstructs the confirmation of nominees who are supposed to be ensuring veterans in St. Louis receive the benefits they earned or helping small businesses in Kansas City recover from the devastation caused by the pandemic,” said Chris Meagher, White House deputy press secretary. “Instead of voting for nominees on their merits and qualification, Senator Hawley is playing politics at the expense of the people he was elected help.”
Hawley said his votes against many of the Biden administration’s appointees was no part of a larger strategy.
“I just don’t support many of these people,” he said.
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